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And…it’s convictions on all ten counts for pedophile cult leader Tony Alamo! Naturally, his response is the typical self-aggrandizement of the pathologically narcissistic. “I’m just another one of the prophets who went to jail for the Gospel.” Some “prophet”; he couldn’t even prophesy his own fate. No, Tony  or Bernie, I mean  you’re just another one of the perverts who went to jail for porking little kids.

So, to complete our celebration of Alamo’s downfall, I guess it’s time now to pick our winners in the “Can you write like allexus8?” contest. So…below are the links to the entries, and in the sidebar is the poll to vote, which will only be open 5 days. (There is such a thing as flogging a joke to death.) Have fun, and maybe, in five days, I’ll have thought of a prize. Unless allexus8 wins. You’ve already got your prize, haven’t you?

The entrants are…(feel free to imagine a drum roll here, if you want to play this out to full cheese effect)

In celebration of the impending conviction of cult leader Tony Alamo on child-sex charges, I thought we’d host a little contest. I have no idea what the winner will get yet. Maybe I’ll think of something eventually, and I’m open to suggestions. “Your own child bride” is not an option, no.

I’m inspired by the remarkable writings of one of Tony Alamo’s followers, allexus8, who has turned up in the comments of the previous Alamo post to harangue us all in a manner that can only be compared to avant-garde, stream of consciousness (or semi-consciousness) free verse. Truly, it’s got to be read to be believed. Check the following exerpt, and see if you don’t agree that a unique and very special poetic voice is in our midst. Behold:

THE SECOND DEATH YOU LYING DOGS PIGS YOU CAN OINK OINK OINK ALL DAY ABOUT SOMETHING YOU DO NOT KNOW ABOUT, OH YES TONY IS GOING UP TO THE BEAUTIFUL PLACE GOD GOT FOR THOSE THAT LOVE HIM. IN THE GOLDEN CITY WHERE GOD IS THE LIGHT.ALL THE LIES YOU TELLING ON TONY ALAMO IS ALL LIES TO SET HIM UP BECAUSE HE EXPOSE YOUR STINK ALL LYING MONSTROUS CULT YOU GONE STAY ATHEIST DEVIL YOU ALL ARE CHILD

Is that great, or is that, as Tony the Tiger might say, grrrrreat? Seriously, it’s like  oh, I dunno  e.e. cummings and Bukowski had a child or something, except they made damn sure it was born with fetal alcohol syndrome. I bet allexus8 simply kills at open-mic slams.

My challenge to you, dear AXP readers, is to see if you can match allexus8’s literary gifts! Can you convey such emotion, such pathos, such an electrifying summation of the ennui of existence and the precarious, existential angst inherent in the human condition? Can you even come close to sounding so totally Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs? I know you’re a gifted bunch out there. Bring it! We’ll all work out whose entry we like the best later on.

(Yes, allexus8 can enter, too.)

For the record, if allexus8 is a Poe, he/she/it is the best one I’ve encountered so far. And if allexus8 is a genuine wackaloon, he/she/it is the best one I’ve encountered so far.

In the wake of recent, more interesting news, the child-sex trial of cult leader Tony Alamo — whose followers used to circulate his full-color newsletters under windshield wipers all around Austin and elsewhere — has been playing out largely under the radar. What stuns me about all of this is not just the ghastly spectacle of a senior citizen “marrying” little girls as young as eight or ten. It’s the way in which Alamo — or, shit, any authority figure at all — can exert such a powerful and hypnotic hold over his followers that the very parents of these little girls themselves became active participants in the violation of their children.

This is the authoritarianism of religion taken to its sickest inevitable extreme, and it illustrates the profound danger of accepting absolute authority as a concept in the first place. And I see this whole trial as a perfect chance to engage mainstream Christians, who, I suspect, would not hesitate to condemn Alamo’s actions in the strongest possible terms. Yes, what Alamo did to these girls is unspeakably appalling, no less so than that he justified it by claiming it’s what God wanted. But look at scripture, and you’ll see episodes of child abuse either directly prompted by divine command (Abe and Isaac) or carried out with tacit divine approval, such as the scene in Genesis 19 in which Lot offers his two virgin daughters to a lust-crazed mob (who, being gay, say no thanks).

Lot’s daughters don’t seem to have been all that offended at being offered as sexmeat by their father, since, later in the same chapter, they get him drunk and fuck him. Those biblical family values, I tell ya! Anyway, the point is: Is what Alamo did to children in the name of God any more reprehensible than what God either orders or tolerates seeing done to kids in the Bible, and the way their parents are so agreeable to it?

I’ve let the blog lie fallow for several days, I know. I’ve been involved in — uh — other things, about which I will talk here as soon as I can. As it’s been several days, I thought what better subject to discuss in getting back in the swing of things than Tony Alamo (pronounced A-lah-mo, apparently).

You may not have heard of this guy, but in Austin we’re fairly familiar with his antics. Every once in a while you’ll walk out of the supermarket to find that the windshield wipers of every car in the parking lot are clutching copies of Alamo’s trashy four-color newsletter, dutifully distributed by his followers, who seem indifferent to the amount of litter they are creating when the majority of them are simply chucked aside by exasperated shoppers. On more than one occasion, I’ve cleared out an entire lot of Alamo newsletters and recycled them. I had an angry confrontation with a couple of Alamo’s clods while doing this several years ago, the upshot of which was that I, evidently, was the “nut,” despite the fact they were ones belonging to a cult run by a convicted felon.

Oh yes, Alamo has an impressive rap sheet. Like Kent Hovind, he failed to report his ministry’s payroll taxes, which cost him a six year stretch. His church runs a bogus charity that was caught red-handed selling donated goods for profit on eBay. He’s an avowed polygamist, who’s been accused any number of times of child abuse (both sexual and otherwise). He has a hate-on for the Catholics second only to Jack Chick’s, which has led to the SPLC classifying his church as a hate group. And finally, he’s just plain batshit insane. After his wife died in 1982, he kept her body on display at his compound for six months, telling his followers she’d be resurrected. (What resulted from that is nearly too bizarre for words.)

Through all of this, the bastard has managed to keep preaching, keep a following, keep scamming money, and, reportedly, keep fucking little girls. Is there anything a truly evil person cannot manage to pull off, even with the law on his tail half his life, as long as he attaches the label “religion” to it?

Well, Alamo’s reign of error may be puttering to a close. Early today the feds raided Alamo’s compound in Arkansas, as part of a child porn investigation. No one has been arrested yet, but it is expected that a warrant for Alamo is forthcoming. Alamo displayed his usual paranoiac class when interviewed about the raid: “Where do these allegations stem from? The anti-Christ government. The Catholics don’t like me because I have cut their congregation in half. They hate true Christianity.” Whatever. Tell it to Bubba while he’s making you felch him in the showers, you dirty old man you.

So, another crazy bites the dust once and for all, we can only hope. At the very least, hopefully we won’t have to deal with cleaning up any more of those stupid newsletters off the pavement.